Friday 21st March 2008

5am! Our alarm went off at 5am this morning so that we could get up and get ourselves to the airport... today we were flying to Vientiane in Laos! Our taxi was waiting for us when we checked out and we were soon on our way. Even at the (ridiculously) early hour, Hanoi was buzzing! There wasn't much traffic, but there were hundreds of people milling about - doing their thing. Had it not been dark I would've thought it was the middle of the afternoon, such was the hive of activity! The airport was pretty nice and we didn't have to wait long before we caught our flight.

We landed in Vientiane at just before 10am and had no problems getting our visas and then through passport control... not like in Vietnam, where Nikki almost got us arrested! When we were walking into the departure area, we put our bags on the scanner and then walked through the metal detector. Nikki's bag went first when all of a sudden the guards stood up and started raising their voices. Someone tried translating but we still couldn't understand. The main guard indicated that he wanted Nikki to empty her bag onto the table - all the while, I was slowly backing away, trying to act like we weren't together. I didn't have a clue what was going on, but Nikki clicked and started giggling: remembering that she's been carrying one of the AK47 bullets we used at the Cu Chi Tunnels (outside Ho Chi Minh). Luckily, it was a USED bullet and we were allowed to continue through - even though I asked them to lock Nikki up.

A taxi bought us to the main area of Vientiane and we were lucky enough to find somewhere to stay pretty quickly. We checked into the Saysouly Guest House and then went out for a walk. For a capital city, Vientiane isn't very big! Something that really struck us straight away was how quiet it was. There were loads of motorbikes and cars about (not quite as many as in Vietnam), but nobody was driving round with their hands glued to the horn, so that made a nice surprise. We walked down to the centre, where we had a look around the shops and markets and then went and looked at a couple of the monuments in town. By now it had gone lunch time, so we caught a tuk tuk back to our guest house and then went for food. On first impressions, Laos is very similar to Thailand and Vietnam, (more like Thailand in terms of the food), so that's good. The restaurant was near part of the Mekong River, so we went for a look and were surprised to see that the water level was really low. It looked almost dried-up, unlike in Vietnam where it was really high!

I don't know if it's the early morning, or the traveling - but we were exhausted afterwards and we went back to our room where we both passed out on the bed. We woke up a couple of hours later and were still pretty tired, but made an effort to go out. We didn't really want any food, but found a bowling alley and had a couple of games of that instead.

A mix of Thailand and Vietnam... I think we'll like it here!